The Changeling
by Jemmiah
Summary: It's a wise man who knows his own son...


The Changeling

By Jemmiah

"Simeon?" Obi-Wan stared long and hard into the pale lemon and candy pink striped carrycot that lay on the floor of the Cates residence living area, staring unblinkingly at the squirming child inside. At first glance nothing obvious seemed to be amiss. The child, a little boy dressed stylishly in a tiny blue romper suit fastened by plasti-poppers, lay on his back and happily kicked his feet into the air as if trying to fend off some invisible attacker. Which in itself was not alarming, except that on the few occasions 'Uncle' Obi-Wan has visited Simeon and Rela's child the boy had all the energy of a narcoleptic slug: happy and content to lie back and just wonder when his next feed might arrive.

This wasn't cause for apprehension. Children didn't stay the same all their life. But perhaps the biggest clue that all was not well was the fact that the last time Obi-Wan had seen young Simon Cates he had definitely sported a small thatch of bright red hair.

"Hmm?" Simeon asked, laying out the cutlery for supper. "What is it?"

"How shall I put this without sounding irretrievably dense." Obi-Wan pondered for a moment. "Does baby Simon still have red hair?"

Simeon stopped what he was doing, fork in hand.

"He did have this morning." He replied with an affectionate chuckle. "I mean, I half expected it to fall out and grow back in again like most babies but he seems to have inherited Rela's mad curly…"

"This isn't Simon." Obi-Wan looked up from the crib.

It had often been said that Healer Apprentice Cates wasn't the brightest glowstick in the pack, which was perhaps slightly unfair considering that he'd spent a lot of his formative years as a padawan scrubbing floors and had therefore taken a while to discover the more delicate intricacies of medicine. Sadly for Simeon he gave weight to the story by standing ridiculously still, as if all his mental circuitry had completely broken down, his mouth doing some strange impression of a Sand Falcon trying to regurgitate a meal.

"W-w-w-whaddaya mean, it isn't Simon?" The young man stammered, his heart hammering fit to burst through his chest. "You don't think I know my own son, is that it? Of course it is! Who else can it be?"

Obi-Wan stepped back, spreading his hands widely in a gesture that invited Simeon to take a look.

"You're just joking me." Simeon found his voice after a moment, allowing relief to relax his rigid muscles. He looked so boneless at that point that Obi-Wan thought he was going to have to scrape him off the floor. "That's a despicable trick to play!" The padawan wagged his finger at Obi-Wan. "Still, you really had me going for a moment!"

"See for yourself." Obi-Wan waved the clearly disbelieving Simeon on towards the cot. When his courage faltered at the last moment Kenobi took hold of his arm and steered him straight over to where the wriggling infant lay, basking in the attention now that he had an audience of two.

There was a pause of a full five seconds as Simeon looked down at the baby.

Followed by a horrified yell.

"It's not Simon!" He shrieked. "Somebody's stolen my son and swapped him with this…this…changeling!" Large, fearful black eyes turned to Obi-Wan as if entreating him to help. "Force preserve us…Rela will notice!"

"Simeon…"

"She will! She'll know it's not Simon…women are good at spotting this kind of thing! Rela will kill me if anything's happened to him…"

"Simeon…calm down."

"Easy for you to say!" Cates found himself lowering his permacrete-heavy legs to the floor as the shock began to sink in. "It's not your son that's lying there! In fact it's not even _my_ son who's lying there…force knows who this one is! My son has been abducted!"

"Simeon, try and think this through logically, will you?" Obi-Wan begged his friend. "And do it quietly. You're disturbing the baby." He nodded at the highly agitated child in the cot who looked as if he were trying to perform some Teras Kasi move.

There no longer seemed to be a single drop of blood in Simeon's face, Obi-Wan noticed. Amazing the affect a child could have on a parent: it was little wonder that such things were normally considered inappropriate to the Jedi lifestyle if Simeon's sudden collapse was anything to go by. It was difficult not to sympathise with the young healer, whose frizzy hair seemed to have stood further erect through the sheer shock of the incident. For a moment Obi-Wan found himself remembering Emma, and the profound affect her short life had upon his own and those around him. It felt, even now, like a punch to his stomach even although he had thought that he'd put it behind him.

He shook his head, clearing his thoughts and letting his sorrow filter into the force. Simeon needed his reassurance, not an equally empty headed friend. Besides which, he told himself sternly, a Jedi should always manage to gain control over his fears and at the moment Simeon was not thinking straight enough to begin that process.

"Look," Obi-Wan cut to the point, "I think there must be a reasonable explanation for all this."

"Is there!" Simeon snapped back. "If there is then I'd certainly love to hear it! This is my child we're talking about, and you're treating his abduction like it was a picnic! I hope you never have to go through anything like this…"

_The joy of fatherhood._ Obi-Wan raised an oblique eyebrow. _I cannot afford to go through that, Simeon my friend. Whilst I value the sanctity of life a Jedi should be a Jedi…you are finding out for yourself just how impossible it is to juggle both existences._

He knew in his heart that Simeon would not be able to steer a true course between both lives. The Jedi or Rela and his son - one day something would have to give, and Obi-Wan was almost certain that Simeon would never forsake his family. In a way he felt happiness for Simeon: the gladness that came from knowing that a friend was content with his lot in life. And maybe, perhaps, there was a tiny, insignificant remnant of the old Obi-Wan Kenobi left to surface: sighing and wishing he'd had the courage to make the same choice. But that time - that person - was gone. And it might be years before Simeon was called to make that sacrifice.

"Why," Obi-Wan found himself asking the only relevant question, "would anyone want to steal Simon? Why replace him with another baby?"

"To delay discovery!" Simeon hissed through clenched teeth. "What else?"

"So," Continued Obi-Wan with dogged determination, "You are telling me that somebody went to the trouble of breaking into your apartment…"

"Yes."

"…To steal your son."

"Yes!"

"And swapped him with a perfectly good baby? Simeon, child snatchers don't swap children! You don't seriously think that somebody has come along, seen your son lying there and thought 'hmmm, I really like that red, frizzy hair…so much better than what my son has. I know; I'll swap him over', and hoped they'd get away with it?"

"Yes…no. Okay," Simeon held his head in his hands, "I don't know."

"How would they get in here in the first place?" Demanded Obi-Wan, slightly irritated at Simeon's lack of common sense. "Only you and Rela have access to the codes for this apartment! You don't think Rela decided she wanted to swap Simon for another baby, do you?"

Simeon launched himself to his feet like a rocket.

"How the kriff should I know!" He screamed at the top of his voice, withering Obi-Wan with the strength of his terror and anger combined. "My son is missing and you're trying to negotiate a peace treaty!"

The baby in the cot took that as his cue to cry. Very loudly.

Obi-Wan winced. "Now look what you've done." He glowered at Simeon, as he attempted to rock the sides of the cot. "You've woken him!"

And then after a brief moment where Simeon and Obi-Wan had attempted to fry each other to with death -glares they were answered with the sound of more baby shrieking coming from the Cates master bedroom, getting rapidly louder and more aggrieved until the whole room appeared to ring with the sound of high-pitched wailing. Obi-Wan and Simeon exchanged astonished looks with one another, although it was Kenobi who seemed to recover his wits first.

"You see?" He smiled, attempting to mollify the fretful child, whose gymnastic attempts appeared to have gone into overdrive. A restless spirit, by the look of things and a real handful: this was certainly no baby Simon Cates! "All it took was a little clarity of thought."

Simeon whipped his head around towards the direction of his bedroom, where the unmistakable sound of a gurning Simon could be heard, plainly distressed.

"Simon!" He clutched at his heart, looking for all the world as if he would surely die with the relief of having found his son. "It _is_! It is Simon…"

"Of course it's Simon!" Rela grumbled as she walked into the room, carrying a large basket of washing stuffed full of children's clothing, half of which Simeon thought he hadn't ever seen before. "And he's now screeching his head off thanks to your little display of Jedi vocals!" The redhead stared past her dumb-struck husband to where Obi-Wan sat by the cot, slowly trying to placate the child by making shushing noises, all to no avail.

"I suppose you set him off." She pointed to the carry-crib.

"I did not!" Obi-Wan huffed back at her. "Your husband can take all the credit for that!"

Rela merely eyed Simeon and Obi-Wan with the warmth a snake might reserve a womp rat, letting both of them know they were in her bad books, and would have to do something extremely special to ingratiate themselves once again.

"Do you know how long it took to settle the pair of them?" She grumbled. "Thanks a lot!"

"But then," Simon glanced back at the 'changeling' in the cot, "you know about this one?"

Despairing, Rela rolled her eyes. "Of course I do. That's Han."

"Is it?" Simeon blinked as if he were none-the-wiser. Which was true, because he wasn't. He stood on his tiptoes, peering at the child with the wispy dark hair, looking for some kind of clue that was probably obvious to everyone except himself.

_No,_ he thought, _still isn't helping…_

"Yep." Rela placed the basket on the table and started to sort through the clothing. "So, before supper - and before you have finished chopping up the vegetables - you can try and get Simon to sleep again."

Simeon evidently wasn't paying any attention at all. His arms flapped by his sides like a giant flightless bird: the long sleeves of his blue healer's tunic rendering him an even more hapless sight.

"But _who_," he continued relentlessly, "Is Han?"

"Might be better not to enquire, Simeon." Obi-Wan said dryly, pushing himself away from the cot. "I tried to get better acquainted and all I got for my trouble was more screaming…not to mention a surprisingly accurate left hook to the jaw!"

Rela seemed non-committal, as if it didn't matter one way or another. She hummed a jaunty tune to herself, all the time wondering what she could and should say. Jemmy wasn't trying to keep Han a secret or hide him away: she could have done that quite effectively on Corellia if she had wished. But there were certain things that she didn't want mentioned that might awaken some curiosity from certain quarters, such as the fact that both Simon and Han had shared the same birth date…and therefore possibly the same conception date as well. She'd laughed at the irony when Jemmy had confided the truth to her: that was just taking the whole friendship thing too far!

"I'm looking after him for a few hours until his mother comes to pick him up." Rela finally answered, feeling the weight of Obi-Wan's stare fixed upon her. "You don't mind, do you?"

Simeon looked quietly relieved. "No…not at all. Although I still don't know who he is, where he comes from and when he arrived!"

"It's quite simple, Simeon." Jemmy suddenly appeared out of nowhere from the open doorway, marching briskly into the room. Rela's presence lent her some much-needed strength: explaining things to a terminally baffled Simeon was going to be difficult enough but with Obi-Wan standing there as if he had been carved from solid rock Jemmiah felt she could use all the support she could get. And there were certainly going to be a lot of similarly confused people when word of Han's existence got around if An-Paj's reaction was anything to go by.

"It is?" He blinked.

"He's mine." Jemmy halted by the cot and peered inside, wanting to make certain that Simeon hadn't managed to turn her son green as he had done himself at the zoo a few years back. Or passed on germs from the infirmary to her baby. Or that the curse of Obi-Wan hadn't struck poor Han and some horrible accident hadn't occurred whilst she was gone.

"Yours?" Simeon exclaimed, taking a step back in disbelief.

"You sound nearly as surprised as I was when I heard the news." Jemmy just resisted grinning at the hopelessly confused Simeon, whose expression resembled a Nerf startled with an electro-prod. "Wasn't pleasant, I can tell you. Just as well Lilith and I never got to the opera. Can you imagine?" She turned her head and snickered at Rela. "Middle of act two and whoosh! Waters have broken all over the floor. I'd have been competing with the professionals to see who could scream the top notes loudest!"

Jemmy bent down and started arranging the crib so that the fluffy Wookiee doll that Flint had given her was in plain sight of Han at all times. He seemed to really like it, which was a relief. She didn't want him crying again infront of the others in case she couldn't persuade him to stop, which would no doubt leave Obi-Wan and Simeon to realise what a terrible mother she really was. It disappointed her to realise how utterly insecure she was when it came to Han: she spent the day wondering if she would ever get anything right - or whether she would recognise it if she did…

Obi-Wan was watching her…following her every move. She could sense his eyes upon her. Clearly wondering…trying to guess how old her son was. Trying to do the math.

Jemmiah felt her courage soar in the face of adversity and continued to tidy her son's crib. Let him look: let them all wonder! They would get no clues from her because she didn't even have an answer to that question herself. And like Lilith said, did it really matter who his father was?

_He's mine._ Jemmiah astonished herself by thinking, as if the realisation had only truly struck her. _He's**my** son. And Corellian's stick together: we don't need anyone else in our lives. Somehow I'm going to get through this mess and come out of it a better person than before. I**can **do this! All I have to do is believe that I can - and I will! I don't need Jonas, and I don't need Obi-Wan. This baby is mine/_

Jemmy almost fancied she could feel Qui-Gon place his hand upon her shoulder, as she often thought he did when she faced a difficult task. If Rela gave her courage then the memory of Qui-Gon brought her strength. She crossed the two straps over to form a proper hold for her fingers and gently lifted the crib containing her son off the floor, still aware of Obi-Wan's astonished - and somewhat shocked - expression.

Thankfully he refrained from saying anything. Jemmiah wasn't looking forward to_that_ conversation when the inevitable question arose.

Just because she was a mother didn't mean she couldn't feel good about herself. Being a mother didn't signal the end of your life. It didn't mean that you ceased to be attractive. Why, Verity and Tawaline had thrived on motherhood! For old time's sake she permitted a shapely wiggle to permeate her walk, certain that both Simeon and Obi-Wan had noticed. Well, Simeon had at least…

" But…how?"

"How what?" Jemmy asked, subconsciously pulling her skirt slightly upwards instead of downwards.

"How is that possible?" Simeon's face was screwed up as if he had swallowed a fork-tailed stinger.

Jemmiah eyed him coolly from the doorway, desperately trying not to make eye contact with Obi-Wan.

"How is it possible?" She repeated, regarding him doubtfully whilst shifting the carry-crib to a better grip in her left hand. "You're the healer, Simeon. I'm sure you don't need any diagrams. If you do you'd better go ask your wife: if you're nice to her I'm sure she'll explain it all for you."

And with that she walked through the doorway, leaving a non-plussed Simeon and a mildly concerned Obi-Wan staring after her as if the galaxy had suddenly ceased to make sense…


End file.
